


you'll have to forgive me

by flowermasters



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Echo whump, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Indoctrinated!Bellamy, Reunion Sex, post-7x11, presumably post-7x12, sort of breakup sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:29:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25888135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: They haven’t embraced, haven’t touched, since he returned; he might as well be an island, Earth, the Ring, as remote and lost as he seems.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Echo
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	you'll have to forgive me

**Author's Note:**

> 🦆🦆🦆
> 
> barely edited and written in one go, so my bad. this will be jossed in a week, but that seems to be the only kind of becho content i can produce anymore. i'll have my becho crumbs served over rice, please.

The knock on her door is firm, just two curt raps, heavy-fisted. Echo rises from her bed instinctively, though she’s more confused than anything. The Disciples haven’t bothered to knock before entering since they found out about the Flame; any semblance of privacy has been lost along with all their leverage.

“Come in,” Echo says when the door hasn’t opened after a beat. She feels silly, like she’s playing house in a prison cell. She stands by her cot, tense and expectant.

The door opens. Her stomach drops when she sees it’s Bellamy, standing there in the soft gray compression clothing the Disciples wear when not in white. Something twists in her chest, painful, almost mortally painful, at the sight of him. He looks more like himself out of those strange white clothes, but the differences in him are still obvious, from his clean-shaven face to the stiff, almost uneasy way he stands in her doorway.

“Can we talk?” he says levelly. The fist around her heart clenches tighter.

“If you close the door,” she says.

He does. Echo hears the click of the lock. They must have given him the biometric access to enter and exit—how they trust him, already. Of course, they trusted Echo, too, nearly as much; but even her artificial conversion to their beliefs had not been as convincing as Bellamy’s real one. His very real betrayal.

Still, he locked the door, without even being asked. 

“Does anyone know you’re here?” Echo asks. She can only assume given his attire that he must’ve been sleeping, though here—much the same as it was on the Ring—it’s impossible to really tell what hour it is. The lights are dimmed for nighttime, quiet time, at least, and have been for some time.

“No one except the guards at each end of your hall,” Bellamy says, taking a couple of cautious steps into the small room. “And there’s quite a few of them. With guns.”

Echo keeps her expression neutral. “I can’t say I’m surprised,” she says. “They’ll kill me soon. Or send me to Sky Ring. Same difference.”

Bellamy’s passive expression changes, but only briefly; a flicker of something, pain like a reaction to an insect bite, before he suppresses it. She’s struck a nerve. “They won’t kill you,” he says. “I won’t let that happen.”

Echo has the wildest urge to laugh, though nothing about this is funny. She can’t remember the last time she laughed. “But you would let them send me away to rot.”

Bellamy must be able to tell. The look he gives her is almost reproachful. “Echo,” he says. “Please.”

She says nothing. _Don’t ‘Echo, please,’ me_ , she wants to scream. _Don’t you dare._

She’s frightened that if she tried to scream, it would come out _hold me. Be mine again_.

“So,” she says, after a beat of silence wherein they look at each other, him with his hands clasped loosely behind his back and her with her fists half-clenched and dangling at her sides, useless. They haven’t embraced, haven’t touched, since he returned; he might as well be an island, Earth, the Ring, as remote and lost as he seems. 

She swallows. “What is it that you came to say?”

She can hear it over the hum from the air vents when he inhales softly. His brows draw together slightly. “I wanted to apologize,” he says. “For today. But I can see I’ve made things worse by coming here.” 

His mouth draws into a little moue, wry. “Just like me, huh.”

She could catalog every one of his expressions, even from ten feet away: every sign that Bellamy is still Bellamy, somehow. She wishes he wouldn’t be sarcastic, though. That’s too much like his old self. It’s almost possible to forget what’s happened to him, to them both.

Despite herself, she softens. She allows herself to take a step forward, then two, mirroring his own cautious movements when he entered. “You should apologize to Clarke.”

His expression tightens now. She’s made an error, perhaps, in bringing that up, Clarke and the M-CAP machine. Still, it’s not untrue. “I will,” he says. “But I wanted to apologize to you first.”

He pauses, then shrugs a little, in the nervous way he does when he feels uncomfortable, or guilty, and doesn’t want to give it away. He always gives it away, somehow. “So. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

His jaw clenches slightly. _Echo, please._ “For today,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “For everything. I never meant to hurt any of you.”

He can’t hide his feelings the way the Disciples can—or rather, claim to—but he’s clearly keeping a lid on them. Echo recognizes this look, the veneer of control that slips every now and then. It reminds her, jarringly, of herself. 

“Don’t apologize for hurting me,” she says. “It hurt me the worst when you died. That wasn’t your fault.”

“But I didn’t die,” he says, meeting her eyes quickly, with a quiet fervency in his eyes that she’s grown to detest, in his gaze and everyone else’s. “I almost did, more than once. But I was saved.”

“Bellamy,” Echo says.

“If you had been there instead of me,” he says, “then you would’ve seen what I saw. You would’ve probably seen it much faster. Accepted it faster. You’ve always been better at seeing the truth than me.”

Echo grits her teeth. Anger rises again, though it is nearly washed away by a flood of sorrow. “I don’t want to hear this, Bellamy,” she says, looking away, finding a nick on the far wall to fix her gaze on. “Please.”

“You’re in pain, I know. I’m sorry.”

“If you were sorry,” she says, “you’d come back to me.”

She’s unable to keep her eyes away, even as she knows looking at him will only make this worse. When she meets his gaze he takes another few steps forward, perhaps without even thinking. They’re only a few feet apart now, as close as they were this morning, when she begged him to come back to himself—to be the Bellamy they lost to Etherea and to Cadogan. 

“I know you don’t believe in this cause, and I know I hurt you,” he says. “But I _am_ coming to you, Echo.”

“Bellamy,” she says, looking away again, “please, just—”

He steps forward immediately, reaching for her, just like he once would’ve; his hands brush her upper arms, then clasp them. She closes the rest of the distance between them, stumbling against his chest and burying her face in his neck. He doesn’t stop her—instead, he wraps his arms around her. “Echo,” he says pointlessly, almost helplessly.

He makes no attempt to stop her as she raises her face to kiss him. Even after all this time without, it’s strange not to feel the gentle prickle of his beard against her chin. He tastes like the mild antiseptic wash the Disciples use to clean their teeth. He smells like their shampoo, their laundry products. But underneath it, there’s a simple, clean scent, something she can’t quite give a name to besides _Bellamy_.

His hands move from her arms to her back. There’s a familiarity, as well as a hint of possessiveness, in the ease with which he grabs her waist. Echo could sob. _So you did miss me._

He’s thinner than he was before everything; that much she can tell, even after five years. His muscle has gone rangy on the bone, stringy. He inhales sharply when she runs a hand through his hair, something he’s always loved, and breaks the kiss. “We can’t,” he says. “I can’t.”

“Please,” Echo says. He’s the only person in the world she would ever beg for.

He clasps her cheek, runs a thumb over her lips; they’ve shifted while kissing without Echo even noticing, walking a clumsy, shuffling path to the wall behind her. She exerts gentle pressure on his shoulder and waist, pulling him in tighter, and he acquiesces. She wants to be pressed up against something, to be held tight against him, kept safe.

A muscle in his jaw ticks, but he’s looking at her mouth, not her eyes. He kisses her again, and she sighs against his mouth in relief.

Echo has had five long years to torment herself with thoughts of what their reunion would be like, if they got to have one. When she dared to allow herself to imagine it, she assumed it would be tender, gentle; despite her best efforts, she always pictured them on the Ring, their bodies coming together in their bed, though that has long been impossible. 

_People used to call it ‘making love_ ,’ Bellamy had told her once, waggling his eyebrows comically at her as they lay together in bed. Then, his smile softened, irrepressibly sweet: _it feels like that with you._

She never would’ve imagined it like this, her sucking a bruise into Bellamy’s neck while he slides a hand up under her shirt, his bent thigh working its way easily between her own. She has the feverish urge to rub herself against him, even through his pants and her leggings. He thumbs her nipple as she bites his neck and they both gasp, foolishly, into the air.

“Don’t leave a mark,” he says, his voice rough.

“You used to like it,” she says. “When I did.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, but his jaw clenches, as does the hand still on her waist. He’s not lost to her like this, not wholly; like this, he’s as much like himself as he’s been since he returned. He can’t hide the flush in his cheeks or the way his pupils have fattened, even if both are only physical reactions. He can’t hide the way he leans into every touch.

“Touch me,” Echo says. “Bellamy—”

“Alright,” he murmurs, almost soothingly. “Alright.”

The fabric of her leggings is stretchy enough that he can slide his hand in without discomfort. He keeps his touch gentle, tender at first and then almost a tease as she gets slicker. She clings to him, struck briefly by the surreality of this, by the impossibility that he’s really here to do this. She moans when he flicks his thumb just right.

He cards his free hand through her hair, his callouses catching against the blunt ends at the nape of her neck. His expression is—possibly—slightly wondrous. “Your hair,” he says. “Why’d you cut it?”

Echo huffs, then bites her lip. “Time,” she says. “It’s been a long, long time.”

He hums in affirmation, though it hasn’t been nearly as long for him as it has been for her.

Her breath hitches again. She’s going to come like this, standing up, clinging to him. “Do you miss it?” she asks breathlessly. “My hair?”

His mouth twitches, wry. “I missed you,” he says.

He increases the pressure gradually, not nearly fast enough; taking his time for her sake, maybe, though that’s not what she wants. She wants to do this again, and again, and again, until she forgets every horrible thing that’s ever happened to her. She’s weak. She always has been, at least where he’s concerned.

“Bellamy,” she says, and he hums again, low and rumbling, and she comes.

Afterwards, he holds her up against the wall—a good thing, too, as she might’ve slid down to the floor without him. She casts a quick glance towards the cot just to their right, but she can tell by the way his brow immediately begins to furrow that he won’t go for that. It’s a step too far, an intimacy the new Bellamy won’t allow her.

But he wants her; he’s watching her closely, his gaze on her mouth again, her throat. “Bellamy,” she says again, sliding a hand down his chest. Still broad and strong, even after everything he’s been through.

“We shouldn’t,” he says again. He leaves his mouth hanging open slightly for a beat as though he’s going to continue speaking; she’s half-afraid he’s going to mention _the Shepherd_.

If she thinks about Cadogan now, she’ll ruin everything; she pushes the thought away, a simple thing after a lifetime of practice. She slides her hand down to the waistband of his pants, keeping her touch gentle but sure. “Let me feel you,” she says. “I want to.” 

He groans very softly, half protesting and half desiring, then presses her against the wall more firmly by the hips. Maybe if he thinks he’s giving her something, doing something for her, he’ll allow them both to have this. It takes some finagling, as Bellamy seems unwilling or unable to let go of her completely, but she manages to shimmy partly out of her leggings, then get his pants down to his thighs. She hitches a leg around his waist, balancing her weight on one foot and using a light grip on the back of his neck for support. The mild unease that comes with the position is worth it for the first long, easy thrust of him inside her, a familiar, primal sort of pleasure.

He holds still for a moment. She can feel him trembling slightly, from his shoulders down to his knees. The hand gripping the back of her thigh tenses slightly. “Echo,” he says, his voice gone ragged.

“Shh,” she breathes in his ear. “I have you now.”

He thrusts into her again, gradually building a rhythm; she clings to him, savoring the flutter of his breath against her neck. It’s good, better than she could have imagined, better than she could have remembered. Their heavy breathing and the sounds of their bodies fill the small room. The guards in the hallway might suspect what they’re doing in here—they might know, if they have any idea what this kind of thing feels like, what it really means. She wonders if Bellamy came to her thinking of this, hoping, and pushes that thought away, too.

“Echo,” he says, his hand squeezing the back of her thigh again. “Echo, are you—I—”

She shushes him again, her voice catching on a gasp with a particularly sharp thrust. “I’m here,” she says mindlessly. “I have you.”

He shivers when he comes, pressing against her so firmly for a moment that she can barely breathe. He eases back, but to her surprise, he moves his hand between them, pressing his thumb firmly over her clit; it doesn’t take her long to come again, trembling, whimpering.

They breathe heavily together for a few moments in the aftermath, twined together; he’s the only thing holding her up. “Come to bed with me,” she says. 

He kisses the side of her neck, too softly, as if in apology. “I can’t stay,” he says.

She knows he can’t. More accurately, she knows he won’t. Perhaps he would let her stay like this for a while, clinging to his warmth, but the cold is already leeching in.

She lets go of him, putting both feet on the floor, and doesn’t miss his soft intake of breath before he lifts his face and takes a half-step back. They right their clothing, not meeting each other’s eyes as they do so. Echo feels floaty, almost lightheaded, as if in the process of disconnecting slightly from her body. She’s familiar with the feeling.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. She wishes he wouldn’t.

“Do you still love me?” she asks, the words burbling up out of her, detritus from the deep well of sorrow and doubt within her.

He looks surprised, albeit in the muted way of doing things he has now, distant and strangely hesitant. But his cheeks are still pink, the curls at his temples damp with sweat. “Of course I do,” he says, not completely without urgency. “I never stopped.”

He must be able to tell she doesn’t believe him, or perhaps he simply can’t bring himself to argue with her; it’s a mercy, as every hollow reassurance he could offer would only cause her more pain. His gaze is heavy, briefly unreadable. “I should go,” he says. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

Perhaps he does love her; she can believe that much. The reluctance with which he turns away would suggest that. But he doesn’t love her enough to put a stop to this. 

“Bellamy,” Echo says after a moment, her voice surprisingly calm, even to her own ears. A special talent of hers. Her legs feel like jelly, but still she stands. “A part of me died with you, you know. Dies, with you.”

Bellamy’s expression is nearly as sorrowful as she’s ever seen it when he looks back at her from the door. 

“Faith will keep you alive, Echo,” he says. “You just have to believe.”

**Author's Note:**

> _You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you  
>  Or just how empty they all seemed without you  
> So kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again  
> It's been a long, long time_


End file.
